A MIDLAND poker champion accused of killing his wife then spending her money during a “playboy” weekend in Las Vegas is set to be extradited to America after last-ditch legal hurdles were dismissed.

A sentence of life without parole would not breach Marcus Bebb-Jones’ human rights, a judge ruled.

Mr Bebb-Jones, 46, murdered his wife Sabrina in 1997 before dumping her body in a national park, prosecutors claim.

The professional gambler was arrested last year in a raid at his home in Kidderminster amid accusations he went on to spend thousands of dollars on her credit cards before botching a suicide bid.

District Judge Howard Riddle, at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, sent the case on to the Secretary of State for a final decision on whether he is to be extradited.

He said that if life without parole was imposed, it would fall short of inhuman and degrading treatment, and he was satisfied that extradition was compatible with Bebb-Jones’s human rights.

The judge said the defence had argued that there remained a real risk that Bebb-Jones could receive the death penalty.

But the District Attorney said the People of the State of Colorado would not seek it.

“If this court refers the matter to the Secretary of State then, before any decision to extradite, the United Kingdom authorities will obtain the necessary assurance.”

The judge added: “If the defendant is found guilty of murder in the first degree, which is the charge he faces, the maximum penalty for committing the crime would be a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The defence argues that a whole life sentence which, in real terms, is irreducible violates a prisoner’s rights.”

Prosecutors representing the US government have claimed that the poker player shot himself in the head in a bizarre sequence of events after allegedly killing his wife. Her skull was not found until 2004.

An arrest warrant was issued by US authorities on October 30 last year, said Aaron Watkins, representing the US government.

Mr Watkins previously said: “On September 16, 1997, he took his wife to a national park in Colorado where she was murdered.

“On the weekend following that incident, it is said, Mr Bebb-Jones went to Las Vegas and spent thousands of dollars, partially using credit cards in his wife’s name.

“He lived a playboy lifestyle during the course of that weekend which culminated in him putting a gun in his mouth and shooting himself in the head.”

Before her murder, the couple ran the Hotel Melrose in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Mr Watkins added: “Despite extensive efforts to clean the vehicle in which the murder is said to have happened, blood matching his wife’s was found in many places in the vehicle.”

Bebb-Jones, who has been living in Kidderminster with his mother since returning to the UK, lived in the US for eight years but has been in the UK for around a decade, the court previously heard.

Bebb-Jones’ counsel Ben Cooper said later: “We will be making representations to the Secretary of State in respect of the risk of the death penalty being imposed in the absence of specific assurance from the US executive which can be relied upon and enforced.”

Following the Home Secretary’s decision in the case as a whole, there would be an appeal against the decision of the district judge if necessary, he said.